I remember when Tweeple were inventing hashtags and retweets in Twitter textboxes, bit.ly was the saviour that prevented url deadweight taking up our precious 1

I remember when Tweeple were inventing hashtags and retweets in Twitter textboxes, bit.ly was the saviour that prevented url deadweight taking up our precious 140 characters. If 2010 Twitter allowed [markdown urls](https://example.com/longlonglonglonglonglonglonglongurl https://example.com/longlonglonglonglonglonglonglongurl) and counted only the visible words, maybe the entire link shortener industry would have died off.